On May 6, kids at KIPP AMP Middle School in Brooklyn got the surprise of a lifetime when Sasha Banks visited the school's wrestling club.
The Wrestling Club is run by Victor Perry, who previously said Banks wanted to visit the students. Students have watched Banks' matches against Bianca Belair and Bayley as part of the club.
Speaking to Cultaholic, Perry explained how the appearance came together.
"They've seen a lot of Sasha matches. She's one of my favorite wrestlers, so of course, I'm going to show them her matches. It wasn't until I showed them Bayley and her, Hell in a Cell, that they loved the storyline. It was intense. They could relate to the storyline; your best friend turns on you. I posted a clip on Twitter of the kids reacting, it was during lunch and recess, so after, I went back to teaching. I kept seeing my phone light up throughout the day and was like, 'what is going on here?' I looked at my phone and it went viral. 'This is crazy and kind of cool.' I went home, played WWE 2K with my kids, and saw Mercedes Varnado had retweeted and then quote tweeted. 'Is that Sasha?' There are a lot of troll accounts that use wrestler's names so I was like, 'it's probably a troll,' but it wasn't, it was her. She said she had to come to our school. 'Is she serious? She saw the video, so that's cool.' I showed the kids the next day and they were like, 'Mr. Perry, you have to bring her to our school.' 'I don't have any connections, I don't know if that can happen. We're just going to go about our day. If she says she wants to come, if she had the time, she will.' A couple months pass, I think it was a month and a half, I got a DM from a person from WWE and they were like, 'Hey, WrestleMania is over, Sasha Banks saw this tweet and she wants to come to the school. How can we make this happen? We'll be in New York in four weeks, let's set up some meetings.' We had a couple of meetings and it just happened. May 6, I'll never forget it," he said.
When asked what Sasha said to the students, Perry said that one student asked Sasha how she supported her brother who has autism and who she wanted to wrestle. One question in particular stood out to Perry.
"There was one question in particular that was asked about 'how does she separate Sasha Banks from Mercedes and do we see any bit of Mercedes show up on television?' We watched the documentary, WWE Evil, and she struggled with her mental health as far as trying to figure out who she is vs. the character and why she took that break. Her answer that she shared, which was powerful, it helped my students realize that their authentic selves can show up in any space that they choose to live in and they have to remember that is their authentic self, regardless of what other people might place upon them or see them as. I thought it was a dope way to answer," he recalled.
Banks has been out of the WWE spotlight for over a month now with her last television appearance coming on the May 13 episode of WWE SmackDown. Banks and Naomi, the WWE Women's Tag Team Champions at the time, walked out of the May 16 episode of WWE Raw and were suspended indefinitely on May 20.
Fans can learn more about Banks' situation by clicking here.
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